Stinking Up the Room With “Electability”

The other point I would make about integrity is that it goes close to the core of why a Romney nomination worries me so much: because we would all have to make so many compromises to defend him that at the end of the day we may not even recognize ourselves. Romney has, in a career in public office of just four years (plus about 8 years’ worth of campaigning), changed his position on just about every major issue you can think of, and his signature accomplishment in office was to be wrong on the largest policy issue of this campaign.

Yes, Obama is bad, and Romney can be defended on the grounds that he can’t possibly be worse. Yes, Romney is personally a good man, a success in business, faith and family. But aside from his business biography, his primary campaign has been built entirely on arguments and strategies – about touting his own electability and dividing, coopting or delegitimizing other Republicans – none of which will be of any use in the general election. What, then, will we as politically active Republicans say about him?

…Mitt Romney’s record is just one endless sheet of thin ice as far as the eye can see – there’s no way to have any kind of confidence that we can tell people he stands for something today without being made fools of tomorrow. We who have laughed along with Jim Geraghty’s prescient point that every Obama promise comes with an expiration date will be the ones laughed at, and worse yet we will know the critics are right. Every time I try to talk myself into thinking we can live with him, I run into this problem. It’s one that particularly bedeviled Republicans during the Nixon years – many partisan Republicans loved Nixon because he made the right enemies and fought them without cease or mercy, but the man’s actual policies compromised so many of our principles that the party was crippled in the process even before Watergate. We can stand for Romney, but we’ll find soon enough that that’s all we stand for.

Read the whole thing… I’ll wait.

Now, last night I got exceptionally peeved with the NH primary coverage, mostly around 8:00 when the talking head gushed that Romney was the clear winner, with 11% percent of the precincts reporting. I turned to the Hubster and said wouldn’t 36% for first and 25% for second be a run-off in a normal election. He just rolled his eyes and returned to his new addiction iPad.

In the spirit of Monday’s tirade, let’s look at some numbers again. 25 votes were fought over in Iowa. New Hampshire has 12 delegates, awarded by vote percentage, but we’re not going to get into that right now. Add 12 to 25 and you’ve got 37. Wow – a whopping 1.62% of the total delegates. And the media would have you believe it’s all over but the shoutin’.

Which gets me back to this ‘electability’ moniker being thrown around by media monkeys and whoever else. The whole thing just stinks. We all Most of us want someone/anyone who can kick The Won out of office. That’s a basic premise most ordinary Americans can agree on. But is Romney truly the best the GOP has to offer? Is Romney what the GOP thinks will turn this country around? Or is he just the latest narcissist to fit the mold?

I beg to differ, kind sirs, I beg to differ. If it does boil down to Romney as the nominee, I will vote for him as the only thing to stop Obama from regulating us back to Third World Nation status, but only while wearing a clothespin on my nose in the voting booth.